10 Cool Things That Happened on My Christmas Vacation

1. John Peter Lewis (from American Idol) sang at my cousin’s wedding, because he’s my cousin’s cousin.
2. I swam with a giant sea turtle in Hawaii. I also swam with a nasty, mean-looking eel and tons of cool fish, but the sea turtle was the most exciting part.
3. My nephew (the cutest-little-momma’s-boy-in-the-world) started to like me a little bit, after ten days of persuasion and cookies.
4. My family spent Christmas Eve on our own private beach; singing Christmas carols, telling stories, and watching the waves roll in.
5. My brother gave me a pink ukulele for Christmas. What’s cooler than a pink ukulele?
6. On Christmas morning, Ben and I got to talk to his brother, Seth, who is on a mission in Florida. This was the view from our balcony while we were talking to him.
7. Be got an XBox for Christmas, which means we don’t have to buy him one for his wedding.
8. Ben found my $100 check from his mom, which I had lost and given up on two weeks earlier, in his wallet. You might be wondering how it got in his wallet. I am too.
9. The flight from Hawaii to LAX served strawberry-banana smoothie fruit juice. If you think it sounds gross, because room-temperature strawberry/banana-flavored water is nothing like a smoothie, you might be in for a real surprise. It was YUMMY!
10. The flight back to Utah was 4 ½ hours late because it was raining harder than Californians know how to handle. Since we got in at 4:00 a.m. yesterday, I went to work late and didn’t even feel one bit guilty about it.